


an admission of failure

by cherry_darling



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Baratheons are the worst tbh, Gen, M/M, Multi, all the feelings for the Baratheon brothers, spoilers through A Game of Thrones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-15
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:47:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherry_darling/pseuds/cherry_darling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>once upon a time there were three brothers. this is what happens next.</p>
            </blockquote>





	an admission of failure

children, don’t do what i have done

i couldn’t walk and i tried to run

(NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL)

 

 

 

 

Here is a story for you:

Once upon a time (for all great stories begin this way; although is this story an epic or a tragedy? Is it a drama? Is this story even a great one, or is it merely an afterthought – a successful rebellion with twenty some years spent under one king before another from another house or land claims the throne after instead of one of his brothers and his house is no longer the ruling one and their reign is now kept to the pages of history books – only time will tell), once upon a time there were three brothers and they were nothing alike.

They do not grow to love each other because by the time the eldest is twenty, he is off fighting wars in the name of love but the woman he loves dies and so he wins the war anyway but he still grows old and bitter, eventually hating his brothers. The middle child is also bitter, bitter and unloved, forced to fight in his brother’s war at only eighteen, and the youngest one never knew his parents and his earliest memories are of hunger and death, raised by maesters not knowing much real love while a siege rages outside.

Eventually, they will all find someone to act as a brother to them. The eldest has his best friend from childhood who will grow up to fight alongside him in his war; he’ll later become his Hand but that won’t last long. The middle brother befriends a knight and a smuggler who saved him from starvation in his youth. He will cut off the man’s fingers but the man will remain loyal to him to the end. The youngest will fall in love with his handsome young squire and they will be inseparable and pay no mind to the rumors that surround them.

After all, it’s easy to replace those who you never really loved, isn’t it?

There are too many years between them to be close, too much pain, too much resentment brewing under the surface and they might have grown up together and the same blood might be in their veins but that doesn’t mean much when there’s no love there.

But this is a story about brothers and blood is all that matters sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 _Did I really want to be king?_ Robert wonders to himself as he stares at the ceiling. It should not be long now, he thinks. The pain is still there but by now, he’s used to it. It doesn’t bother him as much now, now that it’s dulled by medicine.

(It’s a bit funny, Robert thinks, and he would smile to himself but it hurts – everything hurts, every muscle movement causes pain. He’d always expected that he would die young, but not like this, never like this.

He had at least expected a woman to be in the bed with him.

It’s a bit funny but it’s really not.)

He thinks of Cersei, his proud, cold, beautiful wife. He wishes he’d treated her better. He thinks that maybe he could have loved her. He thinks of his children – of Joffrey and Tommen and Myrcella and all the bastards he knows he fathered but never spared a second thought for, never cared about.

( _And why should I care?_ Robert asks himself. _I can’t care for everyone. I am a King, I shouldn’t have to care about the smallfolk_ and he doesn’t catch the irony there.

 _Did I ever want to be king?_ he asks himself again. _Did I truly want this_? He asks himself again and again and he still doesn’t know the answer.)

He thinks of Daenerys Targaryen and he hopes to the gods that it’s not too late. She is just a girl after all. She would have hardly seen fourteen years now. What threat could a child pose that the Seven Kingdoms could not fight off? He thinks of Ned and of the beautiful Lyanna to whom he never said goodbye, Lyanna with her black hair that he could bury his face and hands in and her wide eyes and her long, elegant neck and full breasts and slender waist and sweet smile (and it’s funny but not really that he can only think of her in physical terms. He only remembers her hair and face and eyes and neck and not her mind or her wit. He supposes she must have been brave and clever like her brothers were, but he doesn’t remember. He wonders if he ever truly knew her at all. He wonders if she was even worth it, but now tt is too late to know. He is old and dying – his mind is muddled.)

And he thinks back to Ned, sturdy Ned, gruff, noble, honorable Ned, his close friend, his companion, his brother –

 _Brother_.

He thinks of his brothers, his brothers by blood, of cold, angry Stannis and lively, charming Renly and he thinks _if I could go back – if I could do it all differently… it could be different this time. If I had another chance… We could have been friends…_

He thinks of his brothers as they are now, distant and cold and bitter. He thinks of his brothers the way they could have been when they were children, back when they all had choices.

Back when they could have loved each other maybe.

He imagines jousting with Renly and archery with Stannis. Hunting with them – just the three of them and Renly would tell jokes and maybe Stannis would smile and laugh. They would spend days in the woods, sitting around a fire and roasting their kill. Small council meetings would be easier, less stiff. He would meet Stannis’s daughter Shireen and he’d be the first to dance with Renly’s future bride at their wedding. He would stop complaining about his brothers and stop picking out their flaws and get to know them better, listen to their troubles.

Robert winces as he folds his hands over his chest. He thinks of his brothers not as they are now, hard and angry and wary of him, but what they could have been, ages and ages and ages ago and how he could have made everything _right_.

Robert will die thinking of them, imagining a different life for them all.

Robert will not miss his brothers as they are now but he will regret what they could have been.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The raven carrying the message arrives just before the sun sets, the warm golden light spreading over the water.

Stannis sits down on his bed to read it. Renly has been keeping him up to date with Robert’s declining condition ever since the day of the fateful hunting accident so he knows what to expect, but the final news is still a shock.

The note is awfully short and final, just saying _Robert is dead_ in Renly’s hand, the letters shakier than usual, and Stannis suspects that he should feel sad, but he’s not. He doesn’t really feel anything.

Stannis paces in his chambers for a few minutes before folding the parchment into four sections and putting it in the pocket of his long robe. On his way to Davos’s chambers, he runs into Shireen. She peers up at him with her eyes, so large and so blue, the only thing that is even close to beautiful on her. She seems to sense that something is wrong with her father and she puts her small hand on his. Stannis does not smile at her and he does not say anything to her, but he places his big, dry hand on top of her head and ruffles her hair a little before he carries on.

Davos opens his door before Stannis can knock and, like Shireen, he seems to know what’s wrong without Stannis saying anything. “The King is dead?”

Still mute, Stannis just nods.

“I am sorry.”

“There is nothing to be sorry for. He was my brother by blood and nothing else. There was nothing else between us,” Stannis says flatly, but he feels a curious ache in his heart, last felt when he watched the ship carrying his parents smash on the rocks.

Robert had been there with him.

(It had been the last time Robert had been with him during a trying time, the last time they’d felt like brothers.)

Stannis will never forgive Robert for what he’d done. Going off to fight a pointless war over a woman he hardly even knew, leaving Stannis to hold Storm’s End against a siege, leaving Stannis to defend himself and his men and their brother from starvation and death. Renly had been four when Robert had left and he would have died a child had it not been for Stannis and Stannis had been eighteen – too young for such a difficult task.

Stannis was eighteen when he cut off Davos’s fingers. Stannis had been eighteen and so grim and so ruthless and so bitter and so full of his rigid sense of justice and he will never forgive Robert for this. He will never forgive Robert for abandoning him and later giving all the credit for Stannis’s victory to Ned Stark.

(A small part of Stannis will never forgive Ned Stark for being the brother that Robert had always wanted and the man that Robert will give all of his love and credit to.)

“Please sit, my Lord,” Davos says, and Stannis does so. Davos offers him a glass of wine but Stannis declines it.

Instead, he looks at Davos, who is loyal to a fault and honorable and honest. Davos is his true brother, Stannis thinks. He had never cared for Robert, who was too loud and obscene and would never give Stannis what he deserved. Renly was much the same, except cleverer than Robert could ever hope to be and Stannis will always resent Renly for having the charm that he will never possess and for eventually getting Storm’s End. His brothers would never understand the feeling of being unloved and unwanted and he hates them for it.

He thinks, _I have only one brother now_ and the momentary ache in his heart is gone.

Stannis thinks about the letter Ned Stark sent him and plans on staking his claim to the Throne. He is the rightful heir, after all.

Stannis does not miss his brother.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The first person Renly goes to after he leaves Robert’s chambers is Loras. He doesn’t say anything to his lover – he doesn’t need to. He knows that Loras knows what is happening and what Renly needs so his just shoves the knight – _his_ knight – against the wall of his bedchamber and kisses him hard. It’s a bruising, angry kiss and their teeth clack together. Renly can taste the blood in his mouth but it doesn’t matter because Loras’s hands are everywhere: cupping his face, tangling in Renly’s hair, fumbling with his clothes and their groins are rubbing together and Renly tries to lose himself in the feeling of Loras being so close, Loras’s hardness against his thigh, tries to focus on something other than knowing that Robert is gone and that he has only one brother now.

“I love you,” he moans against Loras’s mouth, his tone begging and broken and scared. “I love you, I love you, I love you. Please don’t ever leave me, Loras, I love you so much” as he palms Loras through his breeches, hard and aching.

Eventually they maneuver themselves to the bed and Loras is on his elbows and knees while Renly thrusts in and out of him at a nearly punishing pace, gripping Loras’s thin hips so hard that it leaves bruises and he comes with a soft gasp and a shudder but there’s no relief there, no lazy satisfaction, and he rests his forehead between Loras’s shoulder blades, breathing slowly as they lay down, Renly’s chest against Loras’s back, and Renly still buried inside him because he needs this, needs this closeness.

Loras tangles their fingers together over his chest and Renly presses his face to the back of Loras’s neck. “I didn’t love him,” he murmurs.

(It is strange to speak of Robert in the past tense, for Robert is not dead, not yet, but Renly knows in his bones that it’s just a matter of time.)

“I know,” Loras whispers back, kissing Renly’s knuckles. “I know.” He says it so simply and Renly knows he’s not being judged. Loras would never judge him.

Renly sighs and kisses Loras’s cheek. “I never loved Stannis either. But they never loved me.”

It seems strange to admit it and Renly doesn’t want to think right now because he never knew how to grieve because he was still an infant when his parents died so their loss never felt like much of a loss to him. He is grateful that he never grew to know them so he never missed them. He squeezes Loras’s hands and buries his face in Loras’s shoulder. “I never expected him to die. He’s always supposed to be here.”

Loras rolls over and draws him into his arms, pulling Renly’s head onto his chest and strokes his hair and it’s strange mourning someone you never loved. He had always been closer to Stannis than Robert, simply because of the siege. He had idolized Robert as a child (but that pedestal is broken, it has been for some time) but Stannis was the one who kept him alive.

(Renly realizes that he’s never thanked Stannis for that, although he’s sure it’s too late now.)

Loras kisses Renly’s brow. “I think it would hurt to lose a family member even if you never loved them,” he whispers. He kisses Renly’s brow again, rests their foreheads together.

They lay like this for some time, naked and tangled together under the blankets and Renly dozes on and off, soothed by the feeling of Loras’s arms around him and the fingers in his hair. He awakens again around dawn and he can sense that Loras is awake without looking at him and realizes with a start and a warm feeling curling in his belly that Loras is the only family he needs, that he’s ever needed that Loras is his brother, friend, lover, companion forever.

The thought is comforting and he smiles a little, the pain in his heart dulled a little.

Renly will miss Robert for a moment, but moments are fleeting after all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the way our story ends:

The eldest brother, the King, is slain by a boar and his two younger brothers will fight to claim the crown for their own, each declaring himself a better claimant than the other. One is a man hardened and embittered by war; he is a soldier at heart and he has won battles. The other is still a charming, beautiful boy with the mind of a politician and the love of the people behind him.

They will fight to the death. Blood will be spilled – the blood of brothers.

Blood is all they have.

(There is no love lost.)

 

So: Is this one of the great stories?

 

You decide.

 

 

 

 

end.


End file.
